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SENATE 


62 d Congress'! 
2d Session | 


/ Document 
1 No. 850 


THE 

"TITANIC" DISASTER 


HON. WILLIAM ALDEN SMITH 


SPEECH OF 


OF MICHIGAN 
IN THE 

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 


MAY 28, 1912 



PRESENTED BY MR. CURTIS FOR MR. GUGGENHEIM 
June 15, 1912.—Ordered to be printed 


WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1912 















I Hon. WILLIAM ALDEN SMITH, of 
[Michigan, said: 

Mr. President: My associates and myself 
return the commission handed to us on the 
1 8th day of April last, directing an immedi¬ 
ate inquiry into “ the causes leading up to the 
destruction of the steamship Titanic, with its 
attendant and unparalleled loss of life, so shock¬ 
ing to the people of the world.” Mindful of 
the responsibility of our office, we desire the 
Senate to know that in the execution of its 
command we have been guided solely by the 
public interest and a desire to meet the expec¬ 
tations of our associates without bias, preju¬ 
dice, sensationalism, or slander of the living or 
dead. That duty, we believe, would be best 
performed by an exact ascertainment of the 
true state of affairs. 



Our course was simple and plain—to gather 
the facts relating to this disaster while they 
were still vivid realities. Questions of diverse 
citizenship gave way to the universal desire 
for the simple truth. It was of paramount im¬ 
portance that we should act quickly to avoid 
jurisdictional confusion and organized opposi¬ 
tion at home or abroad. We, of course, rec¬ 
ognized that the ship was under a foreign flag; 
but the lives of many of our own countrymen 
had been sacrificed and the safety of many had 
been put in grave peril, and it was vital that 
the entire matter should be reviewed before 
an American tribunal if legislative action was 
to be taken for future guidance. Therefore, 
we determined that the testimony of British 
officers and crew and English passengers tem¬ 
porarily in the United States should be first 
obtained. We deemed it important to have 
the surviving officers and sailors of this ship 
meet the passengers of all classes before our 



committee. Without any pretension to expe¬ 
rience or special knowledge of nautical affairs, 
nevertheless I am of the opinion that very few 
important facts which were susceptible of being 
known escaped our scrutiny. Energy is often 
more desirable than learning, and the inquisi¬ 
tion serves a useful purpose to the State. 

We went to the side of the hospital ship 
with purpose and pity and saw the almost 
lifeless survivors in their garments of woe— 
joy and sorrow so intermingled that it was 
difficult to discern light from shadow, and 
the sad scene was only varied by the cry of 
reunited loved ones whose mutual grief was 
written in the language of creation. 

At 10 o’clock on that fateful Sunday eve¬ 
ning this latest maritime creation was cutting 
its first pathway through the North Atlantic 
Ocean with scarcely a ripple to retard its 
progress. 

From the builders’ hands she was plunged 
straightway to her fate, and christening salvos 



acclaimed at once her birth and death. Build¬ 
ers of renown had launched her on the billows 
with confident assurance of her strength, while 
every port rang with praise for their achieve¬ 
ment; shipbuilding to them was both a science 
and a religion; parent ships and sister ships had 
easily withstood the waves, while the mark of 
their hammer was all that was needed to give 
assurance of the high quality of the work. In 
the construction of the Titanic no limit of cost 
circumscribed their endeavor, and when this 
vessel took its place at the head of the line 
every modern improvement in shipbuilding was 
supposed to have been realized; so confident 
were they that both owner and builder were 
eager to go upon the trial trip; no sufficient 
tests were made of boilers or bulkheads or gear¬ 
ing or equipment, and no life-saving or signal 
devices were reviewed; officers and crew were 
strangers to one another and passengers to both; 
neither was familiar with the vessel or its im- 


4 



plements or tools; no drill or station practice 
or helpful discipline disturbed the tran¬ 
quillity of that voyage, and when the crisis 
came a state of absolute unpreparedness 
stupefied both passengers and crew and, in 
their despair, the ship went down, carry¬ 
ing as needless a sacrifice of noble women 
and brave men as ever clustered about the 
Judgment Seat in any single moment of pass¬ 
ing time. 

We shall leave to the honest judgment of 
England its painstaking chastisement of the 
British Board of Trade, to whose laxity of 
regulation and hasty inspection the world is 
largely indebted for this awful fatality. Of 
contributing causes there were very many. In 
the face of warning signals, speed was increased 
and messages of danger seemed to stimulate 
her to action rather than to persuade her to 
fear. 

At noon on that fatal Sunday the steamship 
Baltic warned her of ice within 5 miles of 


5 



her track and near the place where the acci¬ 
dent occurred; at 5 o’clock in the afternoon 
and again, an hour before the accident, when 
but a few miles away, the steamship Cali¬ 
fornian signaled the Titanic to beware of 
danger, which her operator curtly acknowl¬ 
edged; the same evening the Titanic trans¬ 
mitted to the Hydrographic Office in Washing¬ 
ton a message from the steamship Ameril^a, 
saying she had passed “two large icebergs” 
near the track of the ill-fated ship. In the face 
of these warnings, each revolution of her engines 
marked at the moment of the collision her 
highest speed of 24% miles per hour. 

The Titanic rushed onward on her true 
course—one recognized as appropriate and 
agreed upon by mariners as the international 
highway for westbound vessels, yet dangerous 
at this season of the year, when the Labrador 
current may be bearing vast masses of ice 
across the track of ships—scores of these tow- 


ering glaciers planted themselves in the very 
pathway of this ship and were so large and so 
numerous that, in the absence of fog, they 
should have been easily discernible by the 
lookout, who says in his testimony that if he 
had been supplied with glasses, such as he had 
been accustomed to on the Oceanic and on 
this vessel, between Belfast and Southampton, 
but which were denied him by Second Offi¬ 
cer Lightoller between Southampton and the 
place of this accident, he could have seen 
the iceberg with which this ship collided, 
“ soon enough to get out of the way.” One 
of these icebergs was nearly 200 feet above 
the level of the sea, with seven-eighths of its 
ponderous bulk hidden beneath the surface. 
They are composed of ice and earth and rock, 
and old sailors of the coast of Newfoundland 
usually give them a wide berth. Land has 
been formed by these deposits, and icebergs 
have frequently grounded in 20 fathoms of 

7 


S. Doc. 850. 62-2-2 


water with protruding spires more than a 
hundred feet in height. As they go south¬ 
ward their journey is slow and erratic, and 
the influence of spring often causes explosions 
in the ice, which frequently serve to warn 
sailors of danger; sometimes the drift of field 
ice, led by a great berg, has been known to 
convoy schooners in a calm, while shipwrecked 
sailors have drifted hundreds of miles in safety 
upon the irregular surface of the ice. Skillful 
seamanship finds little difficulty in avoiding 
these obstacles, and those most familiar with 
the North Atlantic are usually alert at this 
season of the year to avoid unnecessary peril. 

Captain Smith knew the sea and his clear 
eye and steady hand had often guided his ship 
through dangerous paths. For 40 years storms 
sought in vain to vex him or menace his craft. 
But once before in all his honorable career was 
his pride humbled or his vessel maimed. Each 
new advancing type of ship built by his com- 
8 



pany was handed over to him as a reward for 
faithful services and as an evidence of confi¬ 
dence in his skill. Strong of limb, intent of 
purpose, pure in character, dauntless as a sailor 
should be, he walked the deck of his majestic 
structure as master of her keel. 

Titanic though she was, his indifference to 
danger was one of the direct and contributing 
causes of this unnecessary tragedy, while his 
own willingness to die was the expiating 
evidence of his fitness to live. Those of us 
who knew him well—not in anger, but in 
sorrow—file one specific charge against him, 
overconfidence and neglect to heed the oft- 
repeated warnings of his friends; but, in his 
horrible dismay, when his brain was afire 
with honest retribution, we can still see, in 
his manly bearing and his tender solicitude 
for the safety of women and little children, 
some traces of his lofty spirit when dark 
clouds lowered all about him and angry 

9 




elements stripped him of his command. His 
devotion to his craft, even as it writhed and 
twisted and struggled for mastery over its foe, 
calmed the fears of many of the stricken mul¬ 
titude who hung upon his words, lending dig¬ 
nity to a parting scene as inspiring as it is 
beautiful to remember. 

The mystery of his indifference to danger, 
when other and less pretentious vessels dou¬ 
bled their lookout or stopped their engines 
finds no reasonable hypothesis in conjecture or 
speculation; science in shipbuilding was sup¬ 
posed to have attained perfection and to have 
spoken her last word; mastery of the ocean had 
at last been achieved; but overconfidence seems 
to have dulled the faculties usually so alert. 
With the atmosphere literally charged with 
warning signals and wireless messages register¬ 
ing their last appeal, the stokers in the engine 
room fed their fires with fresh fuel, registering 
in that dangerous place her fastest speed. 


President Ismay testified: “My recollection 
is that between Southampton and Cherbourg 
we ran at 60 revolutions, from Cherbourg to 
Queenstown at 70 revolutions, and when we 
left Queenstown we were running at 7 2 revo¬ 
lutions, and I believe that the ship was worked 
up to 75 revolutions (or about) 22 knots per 
hour, but I really have no accurate knowledge 
of that.” And he again said, when asked if 
she was running at her maximum speed at the 
time she was making 75 revolutions: “No, 
sir; my understanding is, or I am told, that the 
engines were balanced and would run their 
best at 78 revolutions.” 

At 12.55 Sunday afternoon, answering ^ 
the warning of Captain Ranson, of the steam¬ 
ship Baltic, at whose christening he had taken 
such a proud part, and on whose bridge he 
had so often braved the perils of the Atlantic, 
Captain Smith only replied, “Thanks for your 
message and good wishes. Had fine weather 
11 




since leaving.” The soft warmth from the 
Gulf Stream, through which they had passed 
during the day, gave way at night to chill and 
cold; the air and water registered their lowest 
point an hour before the collision. The 
warnings of shipmasters fell upon deaf ears 
and officers and crew seemed to have regarded 
the paper bulletins of danger with absolute 
indifference and, as if to stir their laggard 
spirits. Nature gave a warning of approaching 
peril so significant that passengers in state¬ 
room and steerage shut out the chill and spoke 
to one another of the sudden cold. Sailors 
off the Grand Banks know the importance of 
the thermometer, which is almost as necessary 
to their safety as is the compass. Even the 
quartermaster, Hichens, who regularly took 
the temperature of the water from the sea, 
says, “It suddenly became bitter cold,” and 
added that the first order received by him 
from Second Officer Lightoller at 8 o’clock 


12 



Sunday evening was “to take his compliments 
down to the ship’s carpenter and inform him 
‘to look to his fresh water; that it was about 
I to freeze,” and he says he was also directed 
i by the same officer to find the deck engineer 
and bring him the key to open the heaters in 
the corridor and officers’ quarters, wheelhouse, 
and chart room on account of the intense cold. 
He also said he took the temperature of the 
air and water just before he went to the 
wheel, at 8 o’clock, and that the bucket, with 
i which he dipped the water to make the tests 
“was a small paint tin,” an old one, only im¬ 
provised for the occasion; that the new one, 
a long piece of leather, leaded, was not fur¬ 
nished him; while Mrs. Walter Douglas, of 
Minneapolis, asserts under oath that both she 
and her husband saw the quartermaster Satur¬ 
day afternoon attempt to reach the water 
with this bucket and says that he was unable 
to do so and that both she and Mr. Douglas 


13 





saw him fill the bucket from a hydrant on the j 
deck and take that water to be tested. 

Hichens then said: 

“At 10 o’clock I went to the wheel. * * * 
All went along very well until 20 minutes 
to I 2, when three gongs came from the look¬ 
out, and immediately afterwards a report on 
the telephone, ‘Iceberg right ahead.’ The 
chief officer rushed from the wing to the 
bridge. * * * He rushed to the engines. 

I heard the telegraph bell ring; also give the 
order, ‘ Hard astarboard.’ Repeated the 
order, ‘Hard astarboard. The helm is hard 
over, sir.’ * * * captain * * * 

came back to the wheelhouse and looked at 
the commutator (clinometer) in front of the 
compass, which is a little instrument like a 
clock to tell you how the ship is listing. The 
ship had a list of 5° to the starboard * * * 

about 5 to 10 minutes after the impact.” 

At that moment the ice, resistless as steel, 
stole upon her and struck her in a vital spot, 


14 



while the last command of the officer of the 
watch in his effort to avert disaster, distracted 
by the sudden appearance of extreme danger, 
sharply turned aside the prow, the part best 
prepared to resist collision, exposing the tem¬ 
ple to the blow; at the turn of the bilge the 
steel encasement yielded to a glancing blow 
so slight that the impact was not felt in many 
parts of the ship, although representing an 
energy of more than a million foot tons, said 
to be the equivalent of the combined broad¬ 
sides of 20 of the largest guns in our battle¬ 
ship fleet fired at the same moment, with a 
blow so deadly many of the passengers and 
crew did not even know of the collision until 
tardily advised of the danger by anxious 
friends, and even then official statements were 
clothed in such confident assurances of safety 
as to arouse no fear. The awful force of the 
impact was well known to the master and 
builder, who, from the first, must have known 

S. Doc. 850. 62-2-3 15 


the ship was doomed, and never uttered an 
encouraging sign to one another, while to the 
inquiry of President Ismay as to whether it 
was serious, the captain only replied, “ I think 
it is.” There is evidence tending to show 
that even the water-tight compartments were 
not successfully closed either above or below. 
No general alarm was given, no ship’s officers 
formally assembled, no orderly routine was 
attempted, or organized system of safety begun. 
Haphazard, they rushed by one another, on 
staircase and in hallway, while men of self- 
control gathered here and there about the 
decks, helplessly staring at one another or 
giving encouragement to those less courageous 
than themselves. 

Life belts were finally adjusted to all and 
the lifeboats were cleared away, and although 
strangely insufficient in number, were only 
partially loaded and in all instances unpro¬ 
vided with compasses and only three of them 
16 


had lamps. They were manned so badly 
that, in the absence of prompt relief, they 
would have fallen easy victims to the advanc¬ 
ing ice floe, nearly 30 miles in width and ris¬ 
ing 1 6 feet above the surface of the water. 
Their danger would have been as great as if 
they had remained on the deck of the broken 
hull, and if the sea had risen these toy targets 
with over 700 exhausted people would have 
been helplessly tossed about upon the waves - 
without food or water. One witness swore 
that two of the three stewards in her boat 
admitted that they had never had an oar in 
their hands before and did not even know 
what the oarlock was for. The lifeboats 
were filled so indifferently and lowered so 
quickly that, according to the uncontradicted 
evidence, nearly 500 people were needlessly 
sacrificed to want of orderly discipline in 
loading the few that were provided. There 
were 1,324 passengers on the ship. The 


17 


lifeboats would have easily cared for 1,176: 
and only contained 704, 1 2 of whom were 
taken into the boats from the water, while 
the weather conditions were favorable and 
the sea perfectly calm. And yet it is said 
by some well-meaning persons that the best 
of discipline prevailed. If this is discipline, 
what would have been disorder ? 

Among the passengers were many strong 
men who had been accustomed to command, 
whose lives had marked every avenue of en¬ 
deavor, and whose business experience and 
military training especially fitted them for such 
an emergency. These were rudely silenced 
and forbidden to speak, as was the president 
of this company, by junior officers, a few of 
whom, I regret to say, availed themselves of 
the first opportunity to leave the ship. Some 
of the men, to whom had been intrusted the 
care of passengers, never reported to their 
official stations, and quickly deserted the ship 


18 


with a recklessness and indifference to the 
^responsibilities of their positions as culpable 
and amazing as it is impossible to believe. 
And some of these men say that they “ laid 
by” in their partially filled lifeboats and lis¬ 
tened to the cries of distress “ until the noise 
quited down” and surveyed from a safe dis¬ 
tance the unselfish men and women and faith¬ 
ful fellow officers and seamen, whose heroism 
lightens up this tragedy and recalls the noblest 
traditions of the sea. 

Some things are dearer than life itself, and 
the refusal of Phillips and Bride, wireless 
operators, to desert their posts of duty, even 
after the water had mounted to the upper 
deck, because the captain had not given them 
permission to leave, is an example of faithful¬ 
ness worthy of the highest praise, while the 
final exit of the Phillips boy from the ship and 
from the world was not so swift as to prevent 
him from pausing long enough to pass a cup 



of water to a fainting woman, who fell from 
her husband’s arm into the operator’s chair, as 
he was tardily fleeing from his wireless appa¬ 
ratus, where he had ticked off the last message 
from his ship and from his brain. 

Even the electric signal of distress was 
only sent upon its unseen search for help 
after a delay of nearly 20 minutes, and its 
spark was arrested by an accident so provi¬ 
dential as to excite wonder. In five minutes 
more the ill-paid operator on the Carpathian 
who snatched this secret from the air, would 
have forgotten his perplexities in slumber, and 
no note would have been taken of the awful 
importance of the passing hour. Partially 
undressed, he had left the telephone receiver 
upon his head, and through it heard the call 
for help. On the instant the ship’s course 
was changed and the captain replied, “We are 
coming to your relief.” The elements of 
nature have chosen darkness as the most 


20 


I helpful medium of radio communication, and 
^ operators should be at their posts at that time 
of the voyage, ready to catch every unfavor¬ 
able sign and to apprise officers and crew of 
dangers besetting the ship. Neither timber 
nor iron nor steel are impervious to its secrets; 
in its limitless quest no barrier seems insur¬ 
mountable, and distance is annihilated as by 
the lightning’s flash; schoolboys toy with its 
mysteries and catch its lessons from the house¬ 
tops. Marconi, genius and gentleman, sitting 
in his office in the capital of the Argentine 
Republic, read, as in an open book, a wireless 
message direct from the coast of Ireland. 
When the world weeps together over a com¬ 
mon loss, when nature moves in the same 
direction in all spheres, why should not the 
nations clear the sea of its conflicting idioms 
and wisely regulate this new servant of 
humanity? To that end wages must be 
increased in proportion to the responsibility 


21 




assumed, and service, to be useful, must be 
made continuous, night and day, "while this 
new profession must rid itself of the spirit of 
venality, to which, in my opinion, the world . 
is indebted for a systematic reign of silence 
concerning the details of this disaster, so I 
apparent as to excite international concern, 
and should be discouraged. 

It is no excuse that the apparatus on the 
Carpathia was antiquated; it easily caught 
the signal of distress and spoke with other 
ships nearly 200 miles away, both before and 
after the accident, while the operator says it 
was good for 250 miles. The steamship 
Californian was within easy reach of this 
ship for nearly four hours after all the facts 
were known to Operator Cottam. The cap¬ 
tain of the Carpathia says he gave explicit 
directions that all official messages should be 
immediately sent through other ships, and 
messages of passengers should be given prefer- 


22 



ence. According to Binns, the inspector, the 
apparatus on the Californian was practically 
new and easily tuned to carry every detail of 
that calamity to the coast stations at Cape 
Sable and Cape Race, and should have done 
so. The course taken was singularly in 
accord with the reticence of the officials of the 
White Star Co., who knew at 2.30 Mon¬ 
day morning, through the steamship Virginian 
and their office in Montreal, what was sup¬ 
posed to have occurred, and, according to 
their own admission, the information then 
given and which they battled against during 
all of that day, contained absolutely the entire 
story, and yet, at 7.51 Monday evening, a 
message from their own office, officially signed, 
containing the positive assurance of the safety 
of the passengers, was sent to a half-crazed 
father at Huntington, W. Va., nearly two 
hours after their admitted familiarity with the 
details of the disaster. It is little wonder that 


23 


we have not been able to fix with definiteness 
the author of this falsehood. 

It is not a pleasant duty to criticize the con¬ 
duct or comment upon the shortcomings of 
others, but the plain truth should be told. Cap¬ 
tain Lord, of the steamship Californian, sail¬ 
ing from London to Boston, who stopped his 
ship in the same vicinity where the Titanic 
is supposed to have met with the accident, 
passed two large icebergs at 6.30 p. m. Sun¬ 
day evening, April 14; at 7.15 he “passed 
one large iceberg and two more in sight to the 
southward.” Because of ice he stopped his 
ship for the night in latitude 42° 5’ N., longi¬ 
tude 50° 7' W., and at 10.50 ship’s time 
(9.10 New York time) he sent a wireless 
message to the Titanic, telling them he was 
“ stopped and surrounded by ice.” The 
Titanic operator brusquely replied to “shut 
up,” that he was “ busy.” Captain Lord stated 
that “from the position we stopped in to the 


24 


position in which the Titanic is supposed to 
have hit the iceberg was 19'/^ miles,” and the 
course south, 1 6 west, and he says this was the 
last communication he had with the Titanic. 
He also says, “We doubled the lookout from 
the crew, put a man on the forecastle head— 
that is, right at the bow of the ship—and 1 was 
on the bridge myself with an officer” until half 
past 10, “ which I would not have been under 
ordinary conditions. ’* He thus admits extraor¬ 
dinary conditions, and that he received re¬ 
ports of icebergs, growlers, and field ice 42° 
north from 40° 51' west from Captain Barr, 
of the steamship Coronian, the day before, and 
also from the steamship Parisian on that Sun¬ 
day, while the steamship New Amsterdam 
reported to him several days before that they 
had seen field ice “extending as far to the 
northeast as horizon is visible.” 

He also admits that the morning after this 
accident he “was practically surrounded by 

25 


icebergs, the largest from 100 to 150 feet 
high and from 700 to 800 feet in width 
above the water.” He admits that the officer 
on watch on the steamship Californian saw 
some signals and that when he (the captain) 
came off the bridge at half past 10 he said: 
“I pointed out to the officer that I thought I 
saw a light coming along, and it was a most 
peculiar light.” He also said that he went 
below and told the engineer to keep the steam 
ready, saying that he saw these signals, and 
then said: “There is a steamer coming. Let 
us go to the wireless and see what the news 
is.” He says he “met the operator coming” 
and said: “Do you know anything?” The 
operator replied: “The Titanic." And the 
captain said: “I gave him instructions to let 
the Titanic know,” which he did, and found 
that it was the Titanic, although the captain 
said: “This is not the Titanic; there is no 
doubt about it.” He then says: “She came 
■ 26 


and lay, at half past 1 1, alongside of us until, 
I suppose, a quarter past 1, within 4 miles of 
us. We could see everything on her quite 
distinctly; see her lights. We signaled her 
at half past 1 1, with the Morse lamp. She 
did not take the slightest notice of it. That 
was between half past 1 1 and 20 minutes to 
12. We signaled her again at 10 minutes 
past 1 2, half past 1 2, a quarter to 1, and 1 
o’clock with a very powerful Morse lamp, 
which you can see about 1 0 miles.” 

He further says that “when the second 
officer came on the bridge at 12 o’clock, or 
10 minutes past 1 2, I told him to watch that 
steamer which was stopped. I pointed out 
the ice to him; told him we were surrounded 
by ice; to watch the steamer, that she did not 
get any closer to her. At 20 minutes to 1 I 
whistled up the speaking tube and asked if she 
was getting any nearer. He said, ‘No; she 
is not taking any notice of us; ’ so I said, ‘ I 

27 


will go and lie down a bit.’ At a quarter past 
1 he said, ‘ I think she has fired a rocket,’ and, 
continuing, ‘She did not answer the Morse 
lamp, and she has commenced to go away 
from us.’ I then said, ‘ Call her up and let 
me know at once what her name is.’ So he 
put the whistle back, and, apparently, he was 
calling. Then I went to sleep.” Captain 
Lord then says, “ Rockets are used as signals 
of distress and can not be mistaken.” He 
does not believe that he could have seen the 
Titanic Morse signals, but is not quite so 
doubtful about being unable to see rockets that 
distance. 

Most of the witnesses of the ill-fated vessel 
before the committee saw plainly the light, 
which Captain Lord says was displayed for 
nearly two hours after the accident, while the 
captain and some of the officers of the Titanic 
directed the lifeboats to pull for that light and 
return with the empty boats to the side of the 
ship. 


28 




Ernest Gill, a member of the crew of the 
Californian, says that he came on deck from 
the engine room at 1 1.56, ship’s time, and 
just before the accident that fatal Sunday 
evening, and saw plainly over the rail on 
the starboard side “ the lights of a very large 
steamer about 10 miles away,” and that he 
“ could see her port side lightsthat he then 
went to his cabin and said to his mate, William 
Thomas, that it was “clear off to the star¬ 
board, for I saw a big vessel going along at 
full speedthat he could not sleep and went 
on deck again and “ saw a white rocket about 
10 miles away on the starboard side and in 
seven or eight minutes saw distinctly a second 
rocket in the same place,” saying to himself 
“ that must be a vessel in distress.” 

Why did the Californian display its Morse 
signal lamp from the moment of the collision 
continuously for nearly two hours if they saw 
nothing? And the signals which were visible 

29 


to Mr. Gill at 12.30 and afterwards, and 
which were also seen by the captain and offi¬ 
cer of the watch, should have excited more 
solicitude than was displayed by the officers of 
that vessel, and the failure of Captain Lord to 
arouse the wireless operator on his ship, who 
could have easily ascertained the name of the 
vessel in distress and reached her in time to 
avert loss of life, places a tremendous respon¬ 
sibility upon this officer from which it will be 
very difficult for him to escape. Had he been 
as vigilant in the movement of his vessel as he 
was active in displaying his own signal lamp, 
there is a very strong probability that every 
human life that was sacrified through this 
disaster could have been saved. The dictates 
of humanity shou.d have prompted vigilance 
under such conditions, and the law of Great 
Britain giving effect to article 2 of the Brus¬ 
sels Convention in regard to assistance and 
salvage at sea, is as follows: 


30 


“The master or person in charge of a ves¬ 
sel shall, so far as he can do so without serious 
danger to his own vessel, her crew, and pas¬ 
sengers (if any), render assistance to every 
person, even if such person be a subject of a 
foreign State at war with His Majesty, who 
is found at sea in danger of being lost, and if 
he fails to do so he shall be guilty of a mis¬ 
demeanor.” 

The Senate passed, on the 18th day of 
April last, a bill giving effect to the same 
treaty, which clearly indicates the disposition 
of the Government of England, and our own 
as well, in matters of this character. Con¬ 
trast, if you will, the conduct of the captain 
of the Carpathia in this emergency and im¬ 
agine what must be the consolation of that 
thoughtful and sympathetic mariner, who 
rescued the shipwrecked and left the people 
of the world his debtor as his ship sailed for 
distant seas a few days ago. By his utter 
self-effacement and his own indifference to 


31 


peril, by his promptness and his knightly sym¬ 
pathy, he rendered a great service to humanity. 
He should be made to realize the debt of 
gratitude this Nation owes to him, while the 
book of good deeds, which had so often been 
familiar with his unaffected valor, should hence¬ 
forth carry the name of Captain Rostron to the 
remotest period of time. With most touching 
detail he promptly ordered the ship’s officers to 
their stations, distributed the doctors into posi¬ 
tions of greatest usefulness, prepared comforts 
for man and mother and babe; with foresight 
and tenderness he lifted them from their watery 
imprisonment and, when the rescue had been 
completed, summoned all of the rescued to¬ 
gether and ordered the ship’s bell tolled for 
the lost, and asked that prayers of thankful¬ 
ness be offered by those who had been spared. 
It falls to the lot of few men to perform a serv¬ 
ice so unselfish, and the American Congress 
can honor itself no more by any single act 

32 


than by writing into its laws the gratitude we 
feel toward this modest and kindly man. The 
lessons of this hour are, indeed, fruitless and its 
precepts ill conceived if rules of action do not 
follow hard upon the day of reckoning. Ob¬ 
solete and antiquated shipping laws should no 
longer encumber the parliamentary records of 
any Government, and overripe administrative 
boards should be pruned of dead branches and 
less sterile precepts taught and applied. 

Upon the bosom of the sea the nations 
have for ages commingled together, arts and 
manufactures have been exchanged freely, 
and the knowledge of language spread to the 
remotest limit of civilization. The sea, once 
a torment to primitive man, has long since 
given way to his intelligent mastery, and in 
its changing moods there is real glamour; 
there the daring spirit of the explorer and 
trader still lingers in this period of sharpest 
rivalry; there prizes await the fleetest skipper. 


33 


The very presence of the owner and 
builder unconsciously stimulates endeavor, and 
the restraint of organized society is absolutely 
necessary to safety. As men have re-formed 
anew the natural banks of the ocean and 
struck the shackles from its contracted 
bounds, dedicating its bays and shores to 
commerce, so must we do our utmost to 
overcome its perils. 

Piracy and pillage are twin trophies of 
international concern and, under the same 
searching scrutiny, modern shipping should 
be free from every inherent defect. 

The calamity through which we have just 
passed has left traces of sorrow everywhere; 
hearts have been broken and deep anguish un¬ 
expressed ; art will tipify with master hand its 
lavish contribution to the sea; soldiers of state 
and masters of trade will receive the homage 
which is their honest due; hills will be cleft 
in search of marble white enough to symbol- 


34 




ize these heroic deeds and, where kinship is 
the only tie that binds the lowly to the hum¬ 
ble home bereft of son or mother or father, 
little groups of kinsfolk will recount, around 
the kitchen fire, the traits of human sympathy 
in those who went down with the ship. 
These are choice pictures in the treasure 
house of the affections, but even these will 
some time fade; the sea is the place perma¬ 
nently to honor our dead; this should be the 
occasion for a new birth of vigilance, and fu¬ 
ture generations must accord to this event a 
crowning motive for better things. 

Recently we have witnessed a marked con¬ 
centration of control of ocean transportation. 
Three companies—the International Mercan¬ 
tile Marine Co., the Hamburg-American Co., 
and the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co.—con¬ 
trol 604 ocean steamers with a gross tonnage 
of 3,632,233 tons. These companies con¬ 
trol more tonnage than the total American 


35 


tonnage of all classes on the Great Lakes— 
2,943,523 tons. Any one of these compa¬ 
nies controls tonnage nine times as great as 
the over-sea steam tonnage of the United 
States, and twice as great as the total regis¬ 
tered steam tonnage of the merchant marine 
of the United States. 

Regulation of steamship transportation is as 
necessary as regulation of railroad transporta¬ 
tion, and less difficult to obtain. Transporta¬ 
tion by rail is conducted through settled locali¬ 
ties, where many residents would quickly dis¬ 
cover and immediately report any irregularities 
or disregard of safety requirements, while by 
water it is conducted beyond the criticism of 
any except the actual passengers on the ship, 
making it all the more necessary for definite 
regulations. 

Lanes of travel must be more carefully 
defined, strength of bow more positive and 
water-tight subdivision to limit submergence. 


36 





life-saving equipment better and numerous 
enough for all, discipline and practice a rudi¬ 
mentary exaction, eye more keen and ear 
alert to catch the warning cry, as on British 
battleships as well as on our own, powerful 
lights should be provided for merchant vessels 
to search out the partially submerged dere¬ 
lict; buoys should be carried by every ship to 
mark temporarily the place of the ship’s burial 
in case of accident; and men of strength and 
spirit there must be, won back to a calling 
already demoralized and decadent. But 10 
per cent of the men before the mast in our 
merchant marine are natives or naturalized 
Americans; even England, that 20 years ago 
had barely 7,000 Orientals on her merchant 
ships, now carries over 70,000 of that alien 
race. Americans must reenlist in this service, 
they must become the soldiers of the sea, and, 
whether on lookout, on deck, or at the wheel, 
whether able or commom seamen, they should 


37 


be better paid for their labor and more highly 
honored in their calling; their rights must be 
respected, and their work carefully performed; 
harsh and severe restraining statutes must be 
repealed, and a new dignity given this im¬ 
portant field of labor. 

In our imagination we can see again the 
proud ship instinct with life and energy, with 
active figures again swarming upon its decks; 
musicians, teachers, artists, and authors; sol¬ 
diers and sailors and men of large affairs; 
brave men and noble women of every land. 
We can see the unpreteiitious and the lowly, 
progenitors of the great and strong, turning 
their back upon the Old World, where 
endurance is to them no longer a virtue, and 
look’ng hopefully to the new. At the very 
moment of their greatest joy the ship suddenly 
reels, mutilated and groaning. With splendid 
courage the musicians fill the last moments with 
sympathetic melody. The ship wearily gives up 

38 


the unequal battle. Only a vestige remains 
of the men and women that but a moment 
before quickened her ' spacious apartments 
with human hopes and passions, sorrows, and 
joys. Upon that broken hull new vows were 
taken, new fealty expressed, old love renewed, 
and those who had been devoted in friendship 
and companions in life went proudly and 
defiantly on the last life pilgrimage together. 
In such a heritage we must feel ourselves 
more intimately related to the sea than ever 
before, and henceforth it will send back to us 
on its rising tide the cheering salutations from 
those we have lost. 


39 


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